“When someone meets with a certified credit counselor, they get expert advice for overcoming their most urgent financial challenges,” Bruce McClary, Vice President of Communications at the NFCC said. “Consumers benefit from a comprehensive review of their entire financial situation. Every counseling session is completely confidential with advice that is uniquely designed for each individual.”
It depends — is your credit in enough shape to qualify for a lower interest rate on a consolidation loan? Will you be able to make the monthly payment associated with the loan? Unlike a credit card, where you can pay the minimum, an installment loan locks you into a payment each month for a set period of time. You can also consider a balance-transfer credit card, which could help you save on interest. More info on the pros and cons of all those options here:

If you're seeking credit card relief, ACCC’s debt management program can help. A debt management program provides a unique way of eliminating credit card debt and is individually designed to meet your specific financial situation. If you are looking for to consolidate your debts, you may find relief through ACCC's debt management program. Our professionally trained and independently certified counselors will:

People who eliminate debt often fall back into debt because they don’t change their spending habits. If you don’t change the underlying reason that you accumulated significant debt, then you will probably become indebted and need debt relief help again in the future. National Debt Relief provides educational services to help you avoid this situation. If you want to remain debt-free, you need to take seriously the debt education services National Debt Relief offers.
They make you think they are helping and word it as such. its only after I had “qualified for a loan” with another company to pay off my debt that I was informed of the fees and debts still in collection and no settlement was ever made. I have been paying for over a year and half of each payment went to fees for the “services” they provide.All these services they offer you can do yourself with just 30 minutes of your own time.
A second option is consumer credit counseling. There is any number of consumer credit counseling agencies available on the Internet or you may be able to find one locally. The best of these are nonprofits. When you contact one of these agencies either via a website or in person you will have a counselor that will spend from 45 minutes to an hour with you discussing your finances. The best of these agencies charge nothing for that service.
Premier Debt Help is a company that has helped thousands of customers find effective, affordable, and highly beneficial debt settlement. When you sign up for debt relief with Premier, you get knowledge, experience, and personalized debt relief help for you. We take pride in offering a program that offers rapid debt relief, allows families to pay off debt for a fraction of what they owe, and also helps educate families on their personal finances. If you feel lost, don’t wait until it’s too late. Give us a call, and let our program help you get back on your feet.
When I expressed my concern about not paying my creditors because I had never been late on a payment ever…. I was told not to worried about it. It was going to slightly lower my credit score, you stated that not to worry it will drop off slightly but they will have everything settled within 3 to 4 months and it will go back up after they settle with my creditor and we start making the payments.
The benefit of going for this type of debt relief option is that your monthly payment will most likely be much lower than the sum of the payments you are currently making. You may also have any penalty charges waived as well as any fees. Most of all, you will no longer be harassed by your creditors as they will be handling everything through the debt management agency.
Settlement has big risks, though, including steep fees (15% to 20% of what the company is able to save you is typical). You may also sustain damage to your credit score and receive harassing calls from creditors while you’re saving up for the program. You’ll also have to pay taxes on forgiven debt. Most debt settlement companies are for-profit companies, while most debt management companies are nonprofits.
It depends on how much debt you have and how successful National Debt Relief is in negotiating with your creditors. However, there are quite a few examples of how much past customers have saved in reviews on the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website. One customer claimed enrolling in the program helped them cut down their payments by almost 70%, while another said they were able to shave two years and $3,000 off their debt repayments.
Credit.com’s journalism is largely supported by an e-commerce business model. Rather than rely on revenue from display ad impressions, Credit.com maintains a financial marketplace separate from its editorial pages. When someone navigates to those pages, and applies for a credit card, for example, Credit.com will get paid what is essentially a finder’s fee if that person ends up getting the card. That doesn’t mean, however, that our editorial decisions are informed by the products available in our marketplace. The editorial team chooses what to write about and how to write about it independently of the decisions and priorities of the business side of the company. In fact, we maintain a strict and important firewall between the editorial and business departments. Our mission as journalists is to serve the reader, not the advertiser. In that sense, we are no different from any other news organization that is supported by ad revenue.
If you're unsure of all the accounts you may have open, especially those that might be in collections, you can check your free credit report. It will show what creditors are currently reporting to the credit bureau, including your most-recently reported balances and contact information for the accounts. (Your banks and credit card issuers will have the most up-to-date information.)
That being said, I do not believe that National Debt Relief is a scam. Debt settlement is not the right debt relief solution for everyone, but it is the right option for some. National Debt Relief is a member of the American Fair Credit Council, whose members strictly adhere to a code of conduct that includes not charging any fees for settling an account until that account has been settled. Anyone considering debt settlement should avoid any firm that charges advance fees.
If you are working with a credit counselor and think you’ll miss a payment, they can take proactive steps to mitigate consequences and create a plan to get you back on track. They can even negotiate to have additional late payments or late fees reduced or waived if you miss a payment. The key to making this work is being completely open and honest about your situation and speaking with your credit counselor as soon as you realize your payment will be late.
You may want to set net worth goals, too. Getting to a positive net worth might be an initial goal, and you might also set a series of savings goals for arriving at what you need for retirement. First, though, you'll need to have your debt under control -- and, ideally, wiped out. Keep these goals handy and regularly reflect on them to assess whether you're making progress, and what behaviors are hindering your success.
Once a credit counselor has reviewed your situation and you both agree that a debt management plan is the next best step, the counselor will negotiate with your creditors to see if they'll agree to reduce interest rates or monthly payments, waive fees or reduce the amount you owe. When your credit counselor reaches an agreement with all creditors, you'll begin making monthly deposits with the credit counseling organization, and it will use the money to pay your unsecured debts.
We typically recommend fixing the rate as much as possible, unless you know that you can pay off your debt during a short time period. If you think it will take you 20 years to pay off your loan, you don’t want to bet on the next 20 years of interest rates. But, if you think you will pay it off in five years, you may want to take the bet. Some providers with variable rates will cap them, which can help temper some of the risk.
Take one more look around the house. Do you really need a $100 a month worth of cable TV? Does paying $50-$75 for a round of golf make sense? Can you mow the yard and clean the house yourself? How about exercising without a gym membership? All those things are nice to have … if you’re not in debt. Dump them until you’ve paid off the last of your credit cards.
Bankruptcy is not the credit catastrophe it once was. Certainly filing bankruptcy does not improve your credit and your credit score will suffer if you file. However, you can rebuild your credit within a few years by charging small amounts on a credit card and paying the bill on time every month. Taking out a personal or auto loan (not payday loans) can help improve your score quickly as well if you pay your bill on time every month. After a few years of doing this, your credit score should be in the 700 range. Post bankruptcy, you can thrive and not merely survive if you are diligent about getting back on the road to financial recovery.
Home equity. Another way to refinance your debt is to tap into your home equity to repay what you owe. If you have equity in your home -- that is, you owe less than your mortgage balance -- you can get money out of your home using a home equity loan or a home equity line of credit. You could also refinance your entire mortgage and do a cash-out refi wherein you get a new loan to repay your old mortgage and give you extra cash in the process.
Great article. We are in the process of paying down debt, and the freedom we feel in watching that number decrease is a beautiful thing! Doing something RIGHT AWAY is key because, as your chart above shows, the greater the amount of money going into paying debt, the less you have to spend (even on the things you truly need!), so the debt pile increases and you never get out from under it. Everyone can do something NOW to see a shift in that picture. It all starts with an earnest desire to confront and change. Thanks for sharing.
For example, a person with three or four credit cards, might owe a combined $20,000 on the cards and be paying something like 24 percent interest. The credit counseling agency representing him could go to a bank and negotiate a loan at half that rate and save quite a bit of money in interest. The loan money would be used to pay off the credit cards, creating a zero balance on each card. Instead of making three or four payments every month, the person would have only one payment.